When did being blue collar become a flex?

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The blue collar movement is very proud these days. The world needs these guys to make shit happen no doubt. more than ever these guys have some weird herd mentality where they are super proud to be work horses. myself included for some time. but the older I get and the more I've been doing this I realize it's a grind to literally stay middle class as fuck and I'm on the upper end of the income potential, is this some kind of social conditioning? make em proud to slave away to earn a regular a...